Ethics and the Human Community (review)

254 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY explicate Hegel's Reason in History (specifically p. 15) and Huizinga's "A Definition of the Concept of History" (pp. 1 if) on the meanings of "history" and the modes of expression available to the mind's life. A third question concerns the plea that the historian accept the "conceptual framework" of the historic situation: Has not Smith overstated his case? For on the one hand, if the conceptual framework is never questioned, the motive for research after "truth" is undermined. And, on the other hand, the traditional meaning of "faith" is destroyed if the participant's precarious and contingent relation to the historic event is not acknowledged--both by the participant or actor and the historian. The fourth question relates to the systematic aspect of the distinction between "existential " and "symbolic" history: By what criteria is "World War I" judged to be "existential" and "the Reformation" to be "symbolic" and not vice versa? For surely the First War was not recognized as such--or as First---until the Second; nor did the participants in "the Reformation" wait for things to calm down before considering themselves "reformers." Question five stems from the above, and it concerns Smith's assertion that contemporary "history" is too heavily influenced by symbolic history with its capacity for the impersonal, the abstract, and the necessary. Has Smith not fallen victim to his own criticism when he contends that the individual has no history and is powerless, while only the "community is historic and has the power to change the world"? If this is not sophisticated abstraction, what, then, is? The sixth question also follows from the above. What is the nature of "freedom," guaranteed by existential history, if the historian is irrelevant to the "history," since it could be preserved in the collective memory? What is the "collective memory"? What is "collective autobiography"? The seventh and final question concerns Smith's appreciation for the informing influence-- "conscious or unconscious"---of Christianity on Western civilization: If the influence is expressed --"consciously or unconsciously"--what essentially is "Christianity"? More specifically, how does one differentiate between writers who are Christian (Tillich, Berdyv) and those characterized as "non-Christian" (tIeidegger and Jaspers)? (This is Smith's judgment, not the reviewer's.) While, indeed, other questions could be raised, it is obvious that Smith's book is provocative . Not only does it deserve to be read, it requires to be answeredl Gzoaoz E. DERFER Northern Arizona University Ethics and the Human Community. By Melvin Rader (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston , 1964. Pp. vii + 468) Here is as nearly ideal a textbook in Ethics as it is humanly reasonable to expect; in any case, it is my choice among all I know, and I would justify this preference on two considerations . One consideration is its practical virtues: the book is both instructive as a text for beginning students and enjoyable as literature for old-timers. It is good for both careful study and sheer enjoyment. The other consideration is philosophical: the author's radical humanism liberates the field of moral theory from the burden of traditional cosmological accretions and concentrates critical attention on the evaluation of theories of human relations with a fine sensitivity to human values. Rader's ethics is a judicious mediation between the extremes of absolutism and scepticism. This mediation, according to him, is performed chiefly by the fine arts and their cultivation of discriminating aesthetic judgment. The basic aim of the work is to show in detail how being reasonable and being responsible are related. But I am not here to praise the book and its author, but to indicate briefly how Racier uses the history of ethical reflection and literature. The book has three parts, though the table of contents list four. Part I is devoted to the theory of human excellence and happiness. In it there are sympathetic expositions and incisive criticism of the ethics of Confucius, Aristotle, Spinoza, Freud, Bentham and Mill. BOOK REVIEWS 255 Part II is devoted to the theory of right and conscience. In it there is a similar treatment of divine commandments, Kantian categorical imperatives, the deontologists and the "ideal utilitarians." Part IV is devoted...